Under the Stars
by PastellRain
Summary: The blunt Dell Honne has never been much of a dreamer, especially about astronomy. But the idealistic Kaito Shion practically has the night sky in his eyes. The two meet, and even with their differences, end up forming an unexpected bond. Possible Kaito/Dell. Oneshot.


**Note:** I usually don't write M/M, but Kaito/Dell is really cute.

This fic is for the Write Me Up Inside summer exchange (on Discord), based on a prompt from someone in the server.

The prompt I received was "Person A has never had a home where they could see the stars well. They go for a sleepover at Person B's house. Person B, who loves astronomy, drags them outside with a picnic blanket and they stargaze."

For the recipient-

Sorry I'm making the pairing in this prompt something I personally like. I don't know Logicality at all, sorry! I hope you enjoy anyway?

It can be interpreted that Dell has (or develops) a crush on Kaito. Or vice-versa. Or they share mutual feelings. Or there's nothing deeper than friendship between them. It can be interpreted any way you want, I guess.

...

* * *

You know, I was never really a big dreamer. Everyone else as a kid probably dreamed of being an astronaut at some point... but me? I always knew that was impossible.

Well, not exactly impossible, but... you get the idea.

Even if one succeeded in becoming an astronaut, you'd be less likely to frolic around on the moon amongst the stars like some kind of fantasy, than to be stuck doing some sort of dangerous and tedious work. Or something like that. Whatever... I've never been interested much in astronomy anyway. What people think is fun and fantastical is really just a lot of dull, technical statistics.

It's such a kid's dream anyway. That was what I thought.

Well, that was until I met him...

—

"Alright, now I'll give you a few minutes to introduce yourself to your new work partner! Have fun, students!"

Our English professor sure seemed to like bonding us together with unnecessary group projects. This time, we were supposed to write a piece with a partner conveying our differences, yet also what made us alike despite of that.

"Great..." I thought to myself in a sarcastic manner. I wasn't a fan of it, really.

The classroom slowly filled with chatter. Across from the table, my work partner waved to me and greeted me with a big, almost goofy smile. He seemed very eager to talk to me.

I sighed quietly through my nose.

"Hey." I said. I wanted to get this over with.

"Hi! My name is Kaito!" He beamed, practically bouncing up and down in his seat. "You know, I don't think I've ever seen you around before. But this is great! Now we have the opportunity to get to know each other! Isn't that wonderful?"

"Sure." I said. I honestly didn't know how else to reply. I didn't want to bring his spirits down with how snarky I could be, but I wasn't exactly keen on becoming friends with this guy either...

"Okay, so what's your name?" He asked me.

"I'm Dell." I responded rather bluntly.

"Oh! Oh, cool!" Kaito cheered back. "That's like, the name of a computer company! Yeah, yeah! I could totally see that being the name of like, a cool cyber android person or something! Yeah!"

"...Yeah." I said. I couldn't help but crack a small smile at his energy. Naive and exuberant, but in a good way? A little weird. Very different from me. Definitely not compatible...

"Oh, so what kind of things do you like, Dell?" Kaito asked me. "I like things like... outer space! Yeah! Like all those cool planets and stars."

Ah. I thought it was fitting for someone like him to be in astronomy. After all, I could practically see stars in his eyes whenever he spoke.

"Well, I like computer programming I guess." I said back to Kaito.

"Whoa, really? That's cool!" Kaito smiled. "Well, since you like computers and I like space, what if we worked together and built like, a super-computer simulation of the cosmos! That would be awesome!"

"...Yeah." I said.

"Huh? What's wrong, Dell?" Kaito's big goofy smile suddenly flipped itself over. He was so overly-animated. "You don't seem too thrilled about well, anything!"

"Eh, I guess space just isn't my thing." I said, awkwardly cracking a "natural" smile.

"Huh? Why not?" Kaito asked.

"Hm... It's like... People always tend to see space as this magical, dreamy fantasy." I said. "People are always dreaming of exploring these distant planets... but in reality, that's impossible. Even if we did get there, it wouldn't be the dreamland most people visualize. Plus it would take at years and years of laborious work. You know what I mean?"

I realized I sounded a bit harsh when I noticed that Kaito looked distraught. I was only going to briefly explain why astronomy wasn't my thing, but before I knew it, I went on a tangent about my true feelings. I felt a pang of sudden regret.

"Well..." Kaito began saying, softly. "Say what you want. I still love astronomy. You just don't know how to dream!"

"I only stated the facts..." I said. I was actually meaning to apologize, but that sentence slipped out instead.

I was never good at apologies.

"Why are you so negative?" Kaito asked me again. "You may think it's silly to have dreams, but without them, humans would've never been on the moon!"

"I never said it was silly!" Without me realizing it, my voice was getting louder. It was because I was frustrated. "And I'm not being negative, I'm just giving you a more realistic perspective!"

"I don't see why you have to be so disagreeable." Kaito said. "Even if you didn't agree with me, you didn't have to try to shoot me down like you did."

"I wasn't shooting you down." I said. "I was just presenting my input?"

"Well maybe you didn't realize it, but you were being kind of negative." Kaito said.

The teacher arrived back at the front of the room and told us to wrap up our discussions and get back in our previous assigned seats.

As I left to go back to my seat in the back, I felt like I should've waved goodbye to Kaito for now, or say a quick "alright, see you later". But after the disagreement we ended up having, I felt it would've been too awkward. I failed to muster the confidence to see him off, and returned to my seat without a word, leaving him without a goodbye.

—

The rest of the day, I couldn't get our disagreement off my mind. His remarks didn't hurt my feelings, but I had a feeling that my words could've inadvertently damaged Kaito.

Kaito was an idealistic and optimistic person. I could tell from the get-go. I couldn't relate, but for me, nothing felt worse than crushing the earnest dreams of such a naive, innocent person.

It was like having to tell a child that Santa wasn't real! (I never believed in Santa Claus by the way. You probably saw that coming.)

I felt increasingly regretful as the day progressed. Then it dawned on me that I wasn't a "realist", but rather a pessimist. Maybe dreams weren't so useless after all? They gave people drive. They gave people hope. And after all, they did get people to the moon, like Kaito said...

When I looked in my binder, I realized there was a paper in there with a phone number on it. I turned it over curiously. On the back of the paper, the name Kaito was written. Oh. Kaito must've slipped me his number when I wasn't looking. I suddenly felt relieved. We were working on a project together for the next week, and it would've been much harder to do if I couldn't get in touch with him.

But also, I felt the need to apologize to Kaito.

When I got home, I suddenly felt nervous. What would Kaito think if I were to randomly call his number? What if he was still upset and holding a grudge? It also finally dawned on me that I was kind of shy and awkward.

Then I thought that maybe, Kaito would be expecting my call, given that I did have his number and he didn't take it back.

I took a deep breath, and dialed the number. The phone began to ring. Kaito picked up...

"Dell? Oh wow. You called?" Kaito said, before I could even talk. "So I guess you're not a texter, huh?"

I suddenly felt awkward and embarrassed. I could've just left a text to Kaito instead of calling him at a possibly inconvenient time. But I wasn't really familiar with communicating on my phone. I had forgotten texting was even a thing.

Kaito began to snicker a bit.

"Well, that's alright." He said. "Talking is better anyway."

"Yeah..." I said bluntly. Again. Why couldn't I respond with anything else but "yeah"?

"Um... anyway..." I said. I went over the words in my head one more time. Now I was going to say them for real. "I'm sorry, Kaito. I'm sorry I was harsh to you today."

"Hm?" Kaito answered. "Oh, that. Honestly, it's no big deal! I knew you didn't try to hurt my feelings for real."

I felt relieved. And a little bit embarrassed. So Kaito wasn't holding a grudge? I was the only one who was being stressed? Over nothing?

"Oh. Well... about that." I began to add. "You wanna come over tonight and discuss our project? Are you free?"

"Oh, sure! Of course!" Kaito said. I could tell he was smiling just by hearing his voice. "But hm... how about you come over here? My house has a great view of the stars at night, and I have a telescope! It's great."

"Oh, yeah. Okay!" I said, awkwardly laughing a bit. "So, see you tonight at around eight?"

"That's a good time! Alright, see ya!" Kaito hung up.

I found myself breathing out a big sigh after I hung up. I didn't have much experience with others. I never really had friends before I met Kaito... But then again, was Kaito really my friend? I suddenly realized I had been thinking of him as one. But was he thinking the same about me?

—

At 8:07, I arrived at the front of Kaito's house.

"Fashionably late, just as I expected." Kaito said. "I mean that in a good way though! It means you're fashionable."

"Yeah..." I said. Again. Why.

But I was smiling.

"Anyway, come back to my backyard and we'll talk while looking at the stars!" Kaito said.

"Okay." I said.

We arrived at his hilly backyard. It was a clear night. Kaito already had a big picnic blanket out in the middle of the grassy field, along with his telescope and a couple of binoculars.

"Okay, so let's talk." Kaito said.

"Alright." I said. "Well... this is a nice view. My house is surrounded by tall trees, so I don't usually see the stars like this."

Kaito smiled.

"Did you know I was named after the Big Dipper?" He said. "The second kanji in my name alludes to it. And if you look right up there... a bit to the left, you can see it clearly."

I looked up to where Kaito was pointing. It just looked like a cluster of stars at first, but I was able to make out the shape of the dipper.

"That's interesting." I said. "I mean... constellations. People must have had some imagination to see pictures in stars..."

"Mhm." Kaito said. "I'm an Aquarius. When's your birthday?"

"May 20th." I said.

"So you're a Taurus." Kaito said. "Tauruses tend to be stubborn, yet well-meaning. And... since it's May 16 right now, we should be able to see your constellation... right up there!"

"Huh? Where?" I said. "Wait..."

I suddenly could make out where it looked a bit like a bull.

"Wait... that also means your birthday is coming up, isn't it?" Kaito asked.

"Yeah." I said. "I mean... uh... yes."

"Oh, nice!" Kaito said. "So... are you doing anything that day?"

"Hm... not really." I said.

"Well, now about we come out here like this again when it's your birthday?" Kaito said. "Unless you have something better to do."

"Hm? No." I said. "I'm fine with that again. After all, the view here is... really something."

Kaito smiled at me.

"It's really nice, isn't it?" He said.

"Mhm..." I said. "Um... I guess I understand now. Why people like space. It's really mysterious and far away. It's kinda beautiful."

"Yeah!" Kaito said, laying back on the blanket. "I'm glad I can watch the stars with a friend."

A friend... So Kaito did think of me as a friend after all. Perhaps someday we could become even closer.

"Yeah..." I said, smiling. "I'm glad too."


End file.
